The Living and the Dead
by hijklmnop
Summary: They shave your head, first thing when you get there. A lot of people don't really think about that. That was more of a Muggle tradition, people thought, if at all. It's just the long-timers, and they never really give an explanation why.


They shave your head, first thing when you get there.

A lot of people don't really think about that. That was more of a Muggle tradition, people thought, if at all. It's just the long-timers, and they never really give an explanation why. Inmates had their theories, some of them perfectly rational and some wilder than anyone could believe. Grand escape attempts with ropes made of hair and whatnot. Sirius didn't believe a word of the most of it. Mostly because 90% of the people here were stark fucking raving mad. Or if they weren't, they would be, soon.

Anyway. Yeah. They'd shaved his head. One pleasant memory kicked out the door before he'd even stepped near the Dementors. He'd worked hard on that, dammit. It'd been down to his shoulders. Long enough to throw into a ponytail. Now he just kept running his hand over the top of his head, carefully scrubbing his fingers into the fuzz like he could pretend this was all a big dream. Clearly, he was not actually Sirius, as this was a Sirius who kept short hair, who had clipped fingernails and angry red marks where they'd tattooed an inmate number and who'd supposedly killed his own best friends, the lot of them.

That wasn't the Sirius Black he knew. That wasn't him.

He wasn't supposed to be here. He wasn't here. He was back home, with a cup of tea. James and Lily weren't dead, and they were necking and being disgustingly married. They had a kid, his name was Harry, and his godfather was playing Hippogriff with him, holding him into the air and watching him flap about his arms and make garbled squawking noises. He was chatting with Remus over a cuppa, having made up for all that while Sirius had been convinced he was a spy. There was no war. There was no Voldemort. There was no Peter, goddamn Peter, Peter fucking Pettigrew.

Peace. Utter peace.

It was a thought he'd entertained on the ride there. From admitting to the dock, the dock where they sat you on a tiny rowboat like these were primitive times, where the guards awaited you. It was a thought he'd cherished a bit, and tried to live.

Until he'd gotten to that dock.

There were no less than twenty Dementors spread out along the shore of the surrounding water around Azkaban. They were there to make sure no one got in that wasn't supposed to, and certainly that no one got out. You might have been okay before the trial. You might have been okay being told your sentence. You might have even been okay on the ride there, to the dock. But it was the second you stepped foot towards that boat that you'd start going pale, where you'd shudder and spark and any entertainments of escaping or freedom you'd have would sputter out of existence.

Remus hated him.

James and Lily were dead.

And there wasn't a godchild in the world that would want someone like him now that he was in this place.

There went the wish. There went the tea.

And that's all he was left with, was the thing. He had one Azkaban uniform, he had a boat ride, he had Dementors, he had a name and a number and these thoughts, these ugly swirling thoughts that he didn't even know he could think, didn't know he was capable of thinking them. Dark pits and snaking fingers that he'd always noticed, that he'd pushed to the side and ignored and beat under the carpets that started to creep out with the dementors, with the happy out of the way to keep them at bay. He had thoughts, he had too many thoughts.

But he also had his innocence. Oh, Merlin, did he have his fucking innocence.

They call it unlucky number thirteen because of Azkaban. A tradition that's gone on since the place was built, way back when. It wasn't woss-face Hammurabi, it wasn't anything with Vikings or that bloke Jesus and his dinner that Muggles went all nutters over. Back when the first Azkaban had been built, centuries and centuries ago, back when they first started employing dementors and seeing the effects people started seeing as an aftermath. They called it the unlucky thirteen because if you'd made it past those first thirteen days, past the two week mark, without going stark fucking crazy? It didn't happen. Not for the guilty ones, anyway.

At least with stir-crazy people, the guards didn't have to worry too much about anything else. Those inmates were fed, they were Scourgified every third day, and several times a week they filed into a line and were led into the tiny center court yard for a few hours - mandated exercise, to fight against atrophied muscles. The Dementors didn't care. They got their meals off them. Stingy as they might have been after all the years. Sometimes Sirius thought that it would have been easier just to have gone completely batshit like the rest of them. Then he wouldn't have been trapped to his thoughts and not much else.

Unlucky thirteen had hit Sirius too. Just in ways entirely different than the other inmates.

He was off the walls, and not because he'd necessarily lost it. More that he found it... almost entertaining. Annoying the other inmates, amusing himself. Shouting things, bouncing about the cell, grabbing out at people and screaming. Just for the sake of screaming. Because it got out frustration, because it was something to do other than sit around like most of the other inmates did, because with everyone around him going bibbledy it wasn't looked at strangely if he was yelling his head off.

It was when he spat at one. He didn't even know why, or what it would do, and it didn't even seem to really... well, ido/i ANYTHING, but. It didn't look displeased or the alternative. Mostly because dementors didn't really look like anything, really. Anyway, that had been his twelfth day in. And the guard had proceeded to take its time to sit outside his cell, for the rest of the day, just watching in. Just watching. All Sirius had been able to hear was the rattle shake pull of its breath, felt the prickly feeling of cold ebb throughout the cell and pinch at his arms and legs. It was bloody weird. Like he'd never warm up again, like he'd always feel permanently clammy and uncomfortable and dreadfully fucking empty.

Anyway, whatever goal the thing had been trying to achieve, it had worked. Sirius spent the whole next day on the floor, hardly moving a muscle, hardly even breathing. Fed twice that day and didn't put a dent in either meal.

When they fell hard, they fell fast, the heroes of the story. There seemed to be a prominent breaking point, in some part of the tale, the one defining moment where the protagonist lost it, lost everything, and lost himself on top of it. Sirius wasn't sure he had that moment. Months and months in, he still wasn't sure he had it. He'd changed, that much was for sure. Subdued, drastic amounts. Calmed himself. There was probably more, but it was a bit difficult to tell on a someone who'd hardly had any kind of human contact within the last How Fucking Long? of his life.

He kept tally, tiny little marks carved into the stone of the walls. He kept his memories, because none of them were necessarily happy - Lily and James were dead, Harry hadn't been allowed near him, Remus hadn't talked to him in months and months. He even kept his hair, to some degree, long and scraggly tangles that grew to his mid-back, over the years. Because they may have shaved heads an inmate's first day in, but after long enough... well, Dementors couldn't see, and they kind of... forgot, about how long it would grow. They just knew the emotions about it, happiness oozing like bittersweet chocolate out the cells. They would forget who was who and what was what. Just like all of the inmates started doing the same. Who was who and what was what, the forgetting game.

Like Sirius' worse days. Like the ones where Padfoot would be curled in the corner of his cell, shaking like a fucking leaf. But dogs' emotions were simple, too simple for dementors. Dogs' emotions were confusing, and he kind of got a pass on those days. It was a nice difference. Nice to cower in the corner like a fucking loony for a change. Nice to harness in so much fear and depression and everything bad bad bad that he was left to his most base of devices - a dog, primitive, coiled and ready to strike. Trodden on, really.

He was glad, sometimes. For those tiny marks. When days clumped together and focused into one jumbled ball of yarn and tangles and thorns. They bled into weeks and then into months and Sirius had to count up his little marks, tiny bunches of fives, just to figure out that it was on day 1,147 that he got his first visitor.

Day 1,147 that, thankfully, he got his last visitor.

Sirius didn't know what day it was. He knew it was winter, sometime. Knew it was bloody freezing, that he was in an uninsulated room, without much in the way of warmth other than grimy, threadbare stripes, his hair, and dagger nails, chewed to the quick, digging tight into his arms. Knew that Remus Lupin was bundled to the brim when he stood just outside the cell door, something big and tent-like clutched in his arms, and it had just occurred to Sirius that he hadn't even been sure he could have had visitors. Definitely wasn't expecting anyone anytime soon.

Remus didn't say a word. He didn't have to. There was just a disapproving sort of stance to his posture, something very standoffish and cold, that wasn't chalked up to winter air. Just several long minutes, some kind of angrily buzzing silence where nobody wanted to say the first word. Finally, Remus took a step inward, shoved the bundle he'd been holding in through the bars of the door.

"Merry Christmas."

Sirius hadn't had a clue. He honestly hadn't had any clue. But then again, he could only really keep track of where day bled into night anymore, and not much else. He didn't move, for another minute, staring at the lump of wool on the floor. Was that a blanket? That was a blanket. There was kind of a helpless way gratitude starting oozing out his pores, then, like he thought any sort of thanks or rebuttals wasn't going to be enough right now, wasn't going to show enough indebtedness. He didn't trust his voice, anyway. How stammered it was going to come out. How randomly hoarse and groggy and foreign, something that wasn't entirely used to being appreciated and used anymore.

It didn't matter. He got as far as standing before Remus' voice started again, soft at first, like he was dreading his own words. "Fuck you."

Sirius had his fingers wrapped around the edge of the blanket. Remus had his own around the bars of his cell, the door, his goddamn _cage_, leaning in close. There was a kind of ethereal quality to him right now, Sirius noticed, with the soft glow from outside, the snow falling, the crisp scent of winter in the air. With everything numb and frozen and the carefully crafted clouds of steam that coiled around his lips, through clenched teeth, when he spoke. "Fuck you, Black, _fuck you_! They trusted you! More than anyone in the world, more than me and Pete and Dumbledore! They _trusted_ you!"

This wasn't Remus. He wasn't here. That ethereal, he'd mentioned earlier, it gave a sort of surreal feeling right now. Like he wasn't actually present. Like this was one big bad dream.

"They trusted you, and now they're dead, Black. They're buried six feet under, all because of you and your great bloody iLord/i."

He spit, he actually spit. At the ground, almost hit Sirius in the toes. "I hope you're happy. I hope you're real happy in here. I hope Voldemort appreciates ieverything/i you've idone/i for him."

He wasn't here. He wasn't here.

"There's nothing that makes me happier right now than watching you rot away in here. You cretin. You _corpse_. Waste away to nothing, go ahead." Remus leans in, teeth bared as he peers between the bars. "Where is he, hmm? Where's your lord now? I don't see any rescue attempts, Black, _Sirius Black_. I don't see anyone _caring_, anyone coming to isave/i you."

Stop, Sirius thinks.

"Stop," he says out loud, and the sound's so desperately tiny and guttural and so, so not entirely there that Remus actually does, for a minute, knuckles white against the bars of the door. Sirius' match, on the wool of the blanket, not as noticeable, while they're knobbly and pale pale pale, just like the rest of him.

"I'm glad you're in here," he finally adds, quietly. "I'm glad you get to rot just like the rest of your kind, in Azkaban. I just hope to Merlin they're watching. I hope James and Lily are looking on right now, and laughing. I hope Pete's up there with them, that they all get to see this. Inmate 390. Sirius Goddamn Black. The shell of their former friend. I hope they see it, and I hope they _reap_ it."

Tiny breaths, tiny clouds of white, leaping upwards, so harried coming from Remus' lips. So spectral coming from Sirius'. Remus is worrying his teeth at his bottom lip, jittery and even, baring them into a snarl and Sirius just thinks of _those_ days. Thinks of running around the Forbidden Forest and pushing him into line. He thinks of the times where things were a fuckload simpler.

"Enjoy your remaining years," Remus departs as he pushes back from the bars and disappears into crisp, December air. And Sirius is shell-shocked, so riveted to his spot, blanket in hand, that he hardly even hears it. The rattling, the hissing, more than a few Dementors crowding about the door in anticipation. They were probably used to the happier visitors. Probably used to a bit of a better meal than the one Sirius had to be giving out.

He wondered if James and Lily _were_ watching. Wondered if they'd see this all and understand. Wondered if they'd help him forgive Remus for what he'd said. Or maybe they thought this was just all entirely pathetic. That he ought to man up and see things straight.

Sirius sunk into his corner for the second time that night, with the blanket this time. With wool, glorious fucking wool, that warmed him to the bone, that wrapped about his limbs and offered such an alternative to the harsh angles and lines of Azkaban. He could duck his head in and breathe a little warmer, breathe in the scent of all that wool and that cloth and, underneath it all, the fabric softener scent and the detergent, the distinctive smell of Remus. Just like he'd remembered, and almost forgotten.

It wouldn't last long. It never lasted long with the Dementors.

But, Merlin, was it the most alive he'd felt in a while.


End file.
